


I Guess The Show's Going On

by FifteenDozenTimes



Category: Sparks Nevada Marshal on Mars, The Thrilling Adventure Hour
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bands, Alternate Universe - Human, F/M, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-17 02:22:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5850214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FifteenDozenTimes/pseuds/FifteenDozenTimes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someday, the fact that Red can just aim the right smile at him and he’ll follow her anywhere might get him into trouble. Now, though, it’s gotten him back on his feet, a stack of EPs they might actually sell, and six months of touring in a shitty van. Sparks is pretty okay with all that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Guess The Show's Going On

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Coming To You, Live](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5810302) by [fangirl_squee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fangirl_squee/pseuds/fangirl_squee). 



> [Coming To You, Live](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5810302) is the most magical peak into a perfect AU, and I love it to pieces, and I am so delighted [fangirl_squee](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fangirl_squee/) gave me permission to play in her sandbox. It is an excellent sandbox, I am very lucky.
> 
> This is set just prior to the story of their meeting Frank & Sadie in that fic.
> 
> [epershand](http://archiveofourown.org/users/epershand) is as always a world-class beta.
> 
> Title comes from Nickel Creek's [Rest of My Life](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xcw88SN1VaE), a Perfect Song.

This town, this business, they’re pretty incestuous, so it’s not that weird Sparks runs into Croach when he finally claws his way out of his post-breakup drinking-and-wallowing period. Croach is a weird dude, sort of floats around on the outskirts of things, but once Sparks got over being asked to write _with_ a guy, with a guy he’d never met, he always kind of liked Croach’s weirdness, the formal way he talks, the way he ruins jokes by pretending he doesn’t understand ‘em, the way he plays piano like he hasn’t noticed his fingers are too short and he’s not supposed to be as good as he is. 

It’s a little weird to find out, entirely too many drinks into what was supposed to be a drying-out sort of evening, Croach used to date Red, too, but just a little. Red’s always liked ‘em weird; Sparks is never sure whether he should wear that like a badge of honor or shame. Probably both, depending on the day. So Croach understands, not just how badly Sparks needs to write a few good old-fashioned breakup songs, but how mean he can’t be, because Red’s the kind of girl even when she leaves you in pieces you can’t help but love her.

Sparks wakes up to Croach on his couch, a headache thumping in his brain, a handful of halfway-decent songs, and an idea.

Six months after that he wakes up on Croach’s couch, not because of any late-night enthusiasm but because it’s all the home he’s got in the world. He lost his place a couple weeks ago, but for some reason today’s the first time he knows his idea wasn’t good, wasn’t right, knows he’s failed. And that’s okay, bands fail, Rocket Horse just wasn’t...something. The songs were good, mostly, he can just go back to writing for hire. Maybe drag Croach along with him, now he knows they can work together in between fights. Sparks doesn’t do well with change, or with failing, but he’s okay. It’ll be okay.

He’s still convincing himself when Red shows up.

Croach doesn’t wake up easy before noon, and even if he did Sparks doesn’t want to wake him up ‘cause once he’s awake they have to have The Conversation and he hates those. So he makes Red coffee, too familiar in this kitchen, focuses too hard on the simple task so he doesn’t drown under all the things going wrong right this minute.

“I can come back,” she says, again, and Sparks shrugs.

“It’s fine. I could use the distraction, anyway.”

“You wanna talk about it?”

Sparks sighs, gives up on finding another thing to do now that the coffeemaker’s going, and turns to face her. The thing about Red is, she doesn’t love him, but she wants to hear what’s wrong, wants him to tell her, genuinely wants to make him feel better. Red claims you as a friend, you’re hers for life, as long as you let it be on her terms. Sparks can be okay with that, maybe.

“Well, Croach and I started a band, and I got so excited, I spent all my savings on studio time to cut a demo.”

“Strike one.”

“I stopped taking writing gigs, ‘cause I figured if I just threw all my energy into this thing with Croach, it’d take off.”

“Strike two.”

“And I gave up my place ‘cause I figured any day now we’d be touring, and then I wouldn’t have to worry about it ‘til we took a break.”

“And that’s three. Nevada,” she says, nothing but disappointment in her voice and sympathy in her eyes. “You know better.”

“That’s the worst part,” he says. “’Cause I just kept telling myself, you’re not some starry-eyed kid, you’ve got a good head on your shoulders, you know how this works. And I just kept talking myself into it all anyway.”

“I’d like to hear your stuff. I can’t quite picture what you two’d do together.”

“Two sugars, no milk, right?”

Sparks can hear her roll her eyes over the sound of coffee moving from pot to mug. He smiles, and then he aches, and then he shakes his head a little. It’s ten in the morning, and it’s already been a Hell of a day.

“Yeah. And you know I’ll just ask Croach.”

“Oh, we’ll play it for you. I just need him to be awake so I’m not the only target.”

Sparks sets her coffee, hardly stirred so the first third of the cup is just black and bitter and the last third is more sugar than coffee, down, and she smiles at him. 

“Fair enough. I missed you, y’know.”

“Yeah,” Sparks says, can’t quite meet her eyes. “You, too.”

The silence while they sip their coffee instead of searching for stuff to talk about isn’t as awkward as it could be, except Sparks can’t stop thinking about these mornings at his place, or hers, Red wearing his shirt, hickey on his neck like they were horny teenagers. Those were good mornings; this one’s not bad, all things considered.

“I’m glad you’re here, actually,” Red says, snaps him out of it. “I was comin’ by to see if Croach’d write some stuff with me, I could use you, too.”

“Anytime,” Sparks says, and means it. Red’s gonna be huge someday, that voice of her, the way she shines on a stage, and if all he ever gets to be is a footnote somewhere beneath her star, that’d be okay. “Any particular reason?”

“I might have a shot at opening for Jimmy Lyons,” she says; Sparks knows that voice, it’s her own version of the one that’s gotten him in so much trouble, _I’m not starry-eyed enough to think this’ll happen, not quite ready to accept that it won’t_. “But I need a little more material, and everything I do right now sounds like I’m tryin’ to impress Jimmy Lyons.”

“Imagine that.”

Red hits him, a good solid smack on his arm, and Sparks laughs, and okay, yeah, friends. He can be on board with that.

They drink coffee, and Sparks tells her stories about Croach’s weird pre-show rituals, and Red tells him stories about jumping from background singing gig to gig until she fired her agent in a fit, and Sparks makes more coffee, and scrambles up the last few eggs in the fridge for them, and he’s mostly forgotten the mood he woke up in when Croach comes stumbling out of his bedroom.

“Nice panties,” Red says, with a wolf-whistle.

“Thank you,” Croach says, then blinks and shakes his head a little. “Uh, hello, Red.”

“Hey, handsome. This how you dress for Nevada?”

“I’ve asked him to wear pants _so many times_ ,” Sparks says. 

“My house, my pants policy,” Croach says, but he ducks back into his room and comes out in sweats and a t-shirt. “I am surprised to see you. Both of you, being so - is there still coffee?”

“Yeah, but it’s stronger than you like. And, uh, we need eggs.”

“Well ain’t you two just the most domestic,” Red says, smiling a weird sort of smile at Croach adding to the grocery list and watering down his coffee.

“Gross.”

“If you find it so gross, Sparks, you are welcome to find your own place,” Croach says, without any heat, just a lazy smile over his gross weak coffee. “What brings you here, Red?”

“I thought I was here to do some songwritin’, but I think I’m here to listen to your demo and make fun of you two.”

“Hm,” Croach says. “I see no reason we cannot do both.”

*

There’s an afternoon of songwriting, of Red singing along to their demo and immediately fixing everything that was wrong with it, because of course the handful of songs about missing Red, about yearning for her, of course the thing they were missing was Red herself. Red sleeps on the floor when they realize how late it is, how tired they are, and in the morning they do it all again, and it’s good, and it’s easy, and Sparks forgets to be sad about Rocket Horse.

Red works her way through the long list of people in this town that either owe her favors or are too scared of her to point out they don’t, and she finds them studio time, and an agent, and Sparks doesn’t remember ever actually agreeing to this but before he knows it they’re a band, for real, officially, with contracts and stuff.

Someday, the fact that Red can just aim the right smile at him and he’ll follow her anywhere might get him into trouble. Now, though, it’s gotten him back on his feet, a stack of EPs they might actually sell, and six months of touring in a shitty van. Sparks is pretty okay with all that.

*

It was inevitable, probably, the three of them and the history they have, and Sparks knew that, Sparks thought long and hard about it before jumping into this van-sharing room-sharing bed-sharing arrangement.

If he’s honest with himself, though, he’d figured if Red was going to wind up getting back together with one of them it’d be him.

This motel’s as shitty as the rest, but it’s cheap, and they’re doing pretty well, and in a post-show high Sparks books them a second room. Two showers, two beds that’re more than two feet apart, a little space, a little privacy for one of ‘em.

He dangles the key card in front of Red’s face and laughs when she snatches it out of his hand.

“Figured you could use it,” he says. He’s not sure what he’s expecting, Red veers pretty wildly from expressing her joy by hitting him, kissing his cheek, or hollering loud enough to wake the dead. She doesn’t do any of that, this time - she glances over her shoulder, makes some sort of face at Croach. Croach does something with his eyebrows, a little quirk, and he shrugs, and when Red turns back to face Sparks she looks like she’s about to apologize. Oh. Okay. That’s - okay.

“Why don’t you take it?” she says. “You’ve been a little fidgety lately, I know you like your space.”

“Sure,” Sparks says. He could ask, but he doesn’t want the answer, at least not laid out in front of him in plain English. “Thanks.”

Sparks falls asleep to the rhythm of a headboard banging against the wall, and wakes up to Croach knocking on the door to see if he can use Sparks’ shower, Red’s taking forever. He looks happy, and Red looks happy when they load up the van, and they’re driving all over the place playing good music that makes him happy, and he’s okay, this is okay.

*

For a handful of reasons, a handful that starts with the thump of a headboard against a wall and ends with knowing what Croach sounds like when he gets off, Sparks gets in the habit of taking late-night walks around the parking lot of whatever fleabag they’re holed up in. It’s not a bad habit, really, gives him a chance to clear his head, think about things or not as he feels like it, helps him shake off too many days in too-small spaces with those two holding hands and smiling all goofy at each other.

So he’s in a pretty good space, brain-wise, when he gets back to his room to find Croach stretched out on his bed, hair wet from the shower, drinking half-decent whiskey from a paper cup. 

“Red hogging the shower again?”

“She is sleeping. I could not, and I thought you might be up.”

“Okay.” Sparks drinks the last half-inch of lukewarm water in his own cup and replaces it with whiskey. He toes off his shoes, stretches out on the bed next to Croach, and doesn’t ask. If Croach needs to talk, he’ll talk, and if he doesn’t, Sparks isn’t about to push.

“I have made a mistake,” Croach says, half an hour of companionable quiet and a little too much whiskey later. Sparks is half-asleep, floating in that nice warm tipsy space where time doesn’t really mean anything, but he fights himself back to reality at the sound of Croach’s voice, smaller and quieter than usual.

“Fell in love again? She’ll do that to you.”

Croach sighs, finishes his drink in one last swig and doesn’t refill it. “I - no. The opposite. I am not - I am going to end it, and it is going to hurt her, I think.”

“Really?”

“She is not - this is not - she is not what I am looking for, right now.”

Sparks thinks about the way Red’s been looking at Croach the last couple weeks, the intertwined fingers, the dopey smiles, the way Red’s head tips onto his shoulder when she falls asleep in the back of the van. Wanting anything else doesn’t make a lot of sense to Sparks, and he’s almost drunk enough to say that out loud, but Croach kind of sounds like he wants to cry and Sparks isn’t always an ass.

“I’m sorry,” he says, more to his cup than to Croach.

“I am, as well,” Croach says. “I think the van is about to become a very unpleasant space.”

“I can handle it.” Probably. He can try, anyway, it’s only a month ‘til they go back home for a few weeks’ break, Sparks can handle it for a month. “You wanna sleep here?”

“If you do not mind.”

Sparks wakes up to Red banging on the door, Croach tucked up against his back the way he always does when they’re stuck sharing a bed. Sparks gets out of bed, more of a stumble than anything else, and when he answers the door Red just sort of...sags.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she says. “I’m pretendin’ I don’t know what’s comin’, and I can’t do it if you look at me like that.”

“Sorry,” Sparks says; it’s the wrong thing, but he’s half-asleep and he’s got a headache and he’s pretty sure Red’s never been on this side of it before and he wouldn’t know the right thing if it jumped up and bit him. “You wanna go get breakfast? We’ve got some time before we have to get going.”

“Yeah,” Red says. “Okay.”

*

Home is good. Home is good even when home is still just Croach’s couch, even when it’s just two weeks before he doesn’t get to be home anymore and he’d like to try and find a more permanent living situation in that time. Home is especially good after a month in a van with Red, trying so hard not to have any feelings she just kept blowing up, Croach trying so hard not to get in her way he hasn’t given Sparks a moment’s peace. 

Sparks sleeps for twelve hours straight, wakes up with the worst pain in his neck and the unfamiliar grogginess of too much, instead of too little, sleep. He cooks and eats actual food, takes a bubble bath just because he can, even manages to find a place he can move into when they come home next. He and Croach drift around each other in silence, like Croach needs to pretend he’s got enough space as bad as Sparks does. 

Civilian life is refreshing for about six days; on day seven, Sparks opens up the band e-mail, and on day eight he invites Red over so they can have a band meeting, start getting ready for what’s next.

That might be a mistake. Red doesn’t talk, and Croach doesn’t talk, and they can’t quite meet each other’s eyes. Sparks talks, about logistics, about motel rooms and gas prices, about a few leads he’s working on for opening for people with actual audiences, actual fans of their own, and they don’t say anything until he brings up the request for an interview with him.

“We ain’t doin’ this,” Red says, way more fire in her eyes than the situation warrants. Good, yeah, this is a reasonable thing to fight about, absolutely. “We ain’t your backup, this ain’t Sparks and the Nevadas.”

“Mostly because that is a terrible name,” Croach says.

Red whirls on him, ready to unleash all the force of that fire, and normally Sparks’d be happy to let Croach have this fight so he can make an escape, but not today, not now. Sparks doesn’t want to be a witness to any murders, and he doesn’t want to have to undo all his good tour planning ‘cause one of their band members is dead.

“Croach, don’t help,” he says, draws Red’s attention back to him.

“I am just making an observation.”

“Yeah, well, don’t. And that’s not what’s going on, Red. This happens all the time, she’s probably just doing a piece on my dad.”

“And you can’t just tell her you don’t talk about him?”

“I mean, I could do that, or I could go meet her, and charm her, and maybe get her to write about us instead.”

“Charm her,” Red says, with a skeptical snort.

“Yes.”

“You.”

“I’m charming.”

Red and Croach both laugh at that, which isn’t exactly fair, but Red’s not yelling at him anymore, so that’s something. 

“I’m charming _enough_ ,” he says. “It’s worth a shot. And if it doesn’t pan out, I still get a free lunch.”

“Wait,” Croach says, “who is your father?”

“Seriously?” Red asks. “Sparks.”

“What? I don’t talk about him.”

“His dad’s Caiaphas Nevada, Croach. Like, Stacy Kerns and Caiaphas, like _Indomitable_ , like...like, _Caiaphas Nevada_.”

“Holy shit,” Croach says, eyes wide. Sparks knows that look. Sparks hates that look. “Will he - “

“He’ll sign whatever you want, yeah, as long as I bring it to him, he’ll have someone read any lyrics you send him and send you a nice encouraging form letter, yeah, he’ll listen to your demo, he won’t give you pointers or help you get signed, but he’ll send you a nice autographed photo and probably his best wishes or something, I don’t know.”

“You have been living on my couch for nearly a year,” Croach says, “and your parents are Stacy Kerns and Caiaphas? You could afford - “

“Croach,” Red cuts him off, quick and sharp, watching Sparks like she thinks he might explode, take them all down with him. He might.

“I’m late for the thing,” he says, “the reporter thing. I’m - I’m late,” he says, and gets out of there before Red starts explaining to Croach all the things he can’t ask. Sparks’d bet good money Croach has at least one Caiaphas poster in his room, and better money Red’ll make him take it down before Sparks gets back. Which isn’t quite fair, but Sparks isn’t in the mood to be fair, right now.

The restaurant is small, but mostly empty this time of day, and the reporter looks like one of those types who covers music because that’s what you do, here, that’s how you get work, that’s how you get noticed, that’s how you move on to bigger, more serious things. He’d have better luck with one of the floppy-haired bright-eyed ‘I do music journalism because I always wanted to be a musician’ types, but oh well.

“Miss Rushmore?”

“Rebecca,” she says, offers her hand and doesn’t shake his so much as just holds on to it for a beat, two, three. “You must be Sparks.”

“Must be,” he says, and tries not to wince as hard on the outside as he does on the inside. Talking about his dad always throws him off-balance and he hasn’t quite found his footing again yet.

Lucky for him Rebecca sticks to small talk and pleasantries while they eat, gives him a chance to just enjoy her surprisingly pleasant company and get his bearings.

“So,” she says, once the plates are cleared and they have fresh drinks, and Sparks remembers to dread this little dance. “We’re doing a feature for _Indomitable_ ’s thirtieth anniversary, and I’d like - “

“Look,” Sparks says, doesn’t have the heart to make her go through her whole pitch just to get shut down. “I probably could’ve told you this on the phone, but I don’t do interviews about my father.”

“Okay,” Rebecca says, with a smirk. “Can I finish?”

“Um, sure? I guess.”

“Your dad’s one of the biggest names in outlaw country, and you named your band after law enforcement. I love that. I want to pitch a piece about that - about you, about the crown prince of outlaws rebelling by going straight. It’s a good story.”

“You make me sound like a pissy teenager. ‘Rebelling’. I’m not - “

“You are,” she says. “But I can find another way to phrase it, if that’s bad for your ego. I can be very nice, if properly motivated.”

“Oh yeah? What motivates you?”

“Say yes, let me come out on tour with you for, I don’t know, a month or so, and you’ll find out.”

Sparks should talk to Red and Croach about this, about letting someone in their space, limited as it is, fraught as it is right now. He should take a little time to think about this, about tying this thing of his to his father, about what that’ll do to it, to him. 

“Okay,” Sparks says, instead of doing any of those things. “Yeah, okay.”

*

“I hate this, I hate her, and I hate you,” Red says. Doesn’t shout, just plants her hands on the table in front of Sparks and says it through gritted teeth. So she’s really upset, then, great. 

“What happened?” Sparks asks. If he can get her talking, maybe he can get her yelling, and he doesn’t really want her to cause a scene, but he also would way rather deal with that than get murdered in his bed.

“You told her about me and Croach.”

“She figured you and Croach out, you’re still all weird around each other. I confirmed it, I guess? But - “

“You told her about you and me.”

“Well, yeah, it’s a good story. Realizing we needed you in the band we formed over our broken hearts, real good romantic story, good mythology. It’s...y’know. Good - good story. Please don’t hit me.”

“I will _not_ be this person, Nevada.” Red slams her fists on the table, hard enough to move Sparks’ glass, loud enough Croach and Rebecca look over from the bar, loud enough the bartender raises an eyebrow at them. Well, this is fun. “I ain’t a heartbreaker, I don’t have _conquests_ , and I sure ain’t keepin’ my heartbroken conquests trailin’ after me with the promise of a good romp or two.”

“I know that. I’m sure she knows that.”

“Does it matter what she knows? It’s a _good story_ , Nevada.” Red’s still not yelling. She’s getting quieter, scarier. A little wavery, though - this is really bothering her. She’s not just pissed, she’s upset.

“Okay,” Sparks says, “okay. If you don’t mind rooming with Croach tonight, I’ll room with Rebecca, and I’ll take care of it.” Sparks starts to say _if you were just nicer to her_ , but there’s steam coming out of Red’s nostrils and Sparks likes being alive, for the most part. 

“You better,” she says, and snatches Sparks’ beer before she stomps off to the van.

When Sparks tells her they’re roommates for the night, Rebecca smiles that - that _smile_ of hers, the one where she looks like she’s just gotten exactly what she wanted and wants to celebrate. Sparks doesn’t get what Red’s problem with her is, she’s always nice enough to Sparks, always all smiles and flirty eyes and compliments. Rebecca’s probably onto something with that heartbreaker-conquest theory, if Red’s got this much of a problem with someone flirting with Sparks, but he cares enough about Red to shrug it off.

“I was hoping for something like this, actually,” Rebecca says, when Sparks unlocks the door and waves her in ahead of him. “It’s a good opportunity to go...deep.” 

*

Sparks isn’t stupid. He’s dumb, a lot of the time, slow to notice things, slow to put pieces together, but he’s not stupid. He knows this whole thing can’t work for long, that Red and Croach are more likely part ways forever than learn to be friends again, that Red’s going to stop pretending she hasn’t noticed he’s sleeping with Rebecca, that Sparks is going to have to stop pretending Rebecca would agree with him that this is a tour fling. 

It’ll all topple over, and it’ll happen soon, but Sparks doesn’t even know how to begin preventing that, so is it so bad to try enjoying it while it lasts?

Sparks stands on a stage and sings about wide open skies, listens to the way Red’s voice cuts clear through Croach’s somber baritone, watches their crowds grow one or two people at a time. He naps on Red’s shoulder in the back of the van while Croach tells Rebecca embarrassing stories, drinks cheap beer and watches Croach scribble on cocktail napkins while Red and Rebecca play nice at the bar, holds Rebecca’s hips while she rides him at night and tries not to notice where the emphasis is when she purrs, “I love this,” at him.

There will be consequences to all of this, eventually. But for now it’s okay, it’s fine. It’s good, even. For now.

*

Rebecca’s in the shower when there’s a quiet knock on the door, quiet enough Sparks is startled when it’s Red standing outside, not Croach.

“I can’t sleep,” she says, “and Croach is snoring. Keep me company?”

Red climbs up on the van, oddly graceful, laughs when Sparks almost falls to his death trying to follow her. She offers her hand, steadies him, and he should’ve grabbed his jacket but the cold’s kind of nice. There are worse ways to spend an evening than under the few stars not drowned out by the streetlights.

“You doing okay?” he asks, because he hasn’t checked in a while, because she looks exhausted. “We can swap rooms back if staying with Croach is too much.”

“It’s fine,” she says. “It’s not - it doesn’t bother me as much as you think it does, I just wish he wouldn’t - he doesn’t talk to me anymore. I don’t miss foolin’ around, but I miss bein’ his friend.”

“You’ll figure it out. We’ve got nothing but time.”

“I’ve got to tell you something,” she says, looking up at the sky instead of at Sparks. “I probably should’ve told you sooner.”

This is it, then. It’s too weird, it’s too hard, it’s too much, and she’s going to strike out on her own so she doesn’t have to deal with him or Croach anymore. Okay. “Shoot.”

“So you remember how I was anglin’ to be Jimmy Lyons’s opener, back when we started all this? I never told you, on account of I knew you’d feel guilty, but he wanted me, and I turned it down for this. It was the right call, I think. But he kind of kept after me, and when we had that little break I wound up recordin’ a few things with him, just - I dunno, just to see what happened. And he’s usin’ one on the album, and one for a bonus track, and he wants me to come out on the road with him for a spell.”

“And you don’t want to say no this time.”

“It’ll be good for us,” she says. “He sent me a copy, I’m credited as, y’know, Red Rider of Marshal’s Station.”

“We just need an album to capitalize on that. That we will record, somehow, with you on the road.”

“I’ll have a little time when we get back. And I can do stuff from the road, probably. It’ll be hard, not impossible.”

“And it’ll make you happy.”

“Yeah,” Red says, smiles at him brighter than she has in a while. “It would.”

“Okay.” She’s not leaving, at least not the way he was worried about, not for good. And she’s right, it’s a good publicity move, and if anyone deserves this, deserves to play to stadiums, to play to Jimmy Lyons crowds, it’s Red. And they’ll figure out the recording schedule. Okay.

Except.

“I don’t want to tell Croach,” she says, at roughly the same moment Sparks realizes one of them’s going to have to. Croach’ll ask if it makes Red happy, and when she says yes he’ll assume it meant she wasn’t already, and he’ll blame himself for that. And he’ll assume she won’t come back, and he’ll blame himself for that, too. 

“I know,” Sparks says, “but I’ll be there when you do.”

“Thanks, Nevada,” Red says, stretching out on her back to stare off into space. It’s late, they should both be sleeping, but Sparks can’t quite bring himself to go back inside just yet.

*

Marshal’s Station plays two shows in Tampa, because for the first time there’s enough demand for that. Demand, in this instance, being a relative term; Sparks is pretty sure the tiny venue can only hold about fifty people. It’s good, though, a good feeling and a good place, one of those stages that’s about waist-high to most people. Sparks is starting to recognize faces, a handful of people who showed up in the front row in Atlanta, in New Orleans, here. That’s good, too.

“I am sorry, Sparks,” Croach says, for the thousandth time. “I should never have - “

“Croach,” Sparks says, through gritted teeth. There’s so much good right now, focus on that. “Do I need to tell Red you’re pretending like you have any control or influence over her choices?”

“No.”

Sparks is trying, he really is. Whatever’s going on in Croach’s weird brain when it comes to Red, it’s big and it’s complicated and he’s clearly not handling it well. But there’s only so many times he can have the same conversation, a conversation that can’t go anywhere unless Croach also has it with Red. Sparks ducks his head and focuses on tuning his guitar for all of five seconds before the other conversation he doesn’t want to have finds him.

“Sparks, I’ve been looking for you.”

“I’ve been right here,” he says, and Rebecca sighs. 

“When is your flight, Miss Rushmore?”

“I’ve asked you to call me Rebecca, Croach, and it’s at noon tomorrow. Which is why it’s awfully strange I can’t seem to get my _boyfriend_ to spend any time with me today.”

“I’m not -” Sparks starts, and thinks better of it. “We’ve got setting up stuff to do. Tuning stuff. Soundcheck stuff.”

Sparks has done such a good job putting this particular problem off. If she’d just cooperate, they could just never have this conversation, let the tour fling die a respectable death like tour flings are supposed to. She’s headed home, to finish up the story, and by the time Sparks gets home they’ll only have a week or two of time in the same place before she heads out on some other assignment. It could be so neat, and so easy, and instead she keeps using words like _intentions_ and _relationship_ and _boyfriend_.

“I hoped you wouldn’t be one of _those_ musicians, Sparks,” she says. Sparks is torn between groaning and punching Croach right in his idiot nose for the way his eyebrow quirks. A normal person would give them a little privacy for this, even if it’s Rebecca’s fault they’re having this talk while he sits on an actual stage.

“What sort of musicians?”

“You know,” she says, “so married to the idea of being the lonesome cowboy sort, because it’s so impossible to make good music if you just let someone love you and accept being happy.”

“Sure,” Sparks says, “that definitely sounds like me.”

“It does not - “

“ _Croach_ , isn’t there something else you could be doing right now? Somewhere else? Out of earshot?”

“I can not think of anything.”

“Stop using Croach as an excuse not to have an honest conversation.”

There’s a handful of smart things to say in response to that, and a bunch of not-smart things, and at least one really, really stupid thing. 

“No,” Sparks says, because this is the best possible time to be stupid. At least it ends the conversation; Rebecca opens her mouth, closes it, spins on her heel and stomps away without another word. Okay. Whoops, maybe.

“I hope this does not have a negative effect on the article.” Croach says. 

*

Red’s happy, Sparks tells himself, when it starts taking her longer and longer to return his calls and emails. Red’s happy, and this was always the plan, he tells himself, when he finds out there was a problem with a few of the vocal tracks they laid down in such a hurry and it takes her three weeks to track down a place to record hers fresh. 

The label’s patient with the delay, and that’s probably at least a little because it’s an arm of the big guys Lyons’s signed with, so Red’s running off on tour is making them nearly as happy as it’s making her. She’s so happy, and Sparks knows she’s so happy because he’s standing in line at the grocery store and she’s beaming at Jimmy Lyons on a whole bunch of tabloid covers. Beaming at him, and kissing him. So that’s what she’s too busy doing to keep in touch.

Sparks buys his groceries, and a tabloid, which he halfheartedly hides under a loaf of bread like the cashier won’t have to look at it when she rings it up anyway. Whatever. He buys his groceries, and brings them home, and leaves the magazine on his coffee table so when Croach comes over later to talk about album art he’ll see it and Sparks won’t have to tell him.

His plan doesn’t really work; Croach shows up with a six-pack, which was a nice gesture the first few times but Sparks is starting to worry it means something that he never shows up without one. He puts it right on top of the magazine without looking, just opens up a beer and settles onto Sparks’ couch. 

“Do you think it would be possible for us to play some shows while we are here? I am a little restless.”

“I assume so,” Sparks says. “No one likes us without Red, though.”

“That is alright.”

Sparks watches Croach drain the bottle and go for another. 

“Hey, uh, speaking of Red, you heard from her lately?”

“We spoke last night. Have you not?”

“No. I mean, yeah, I talk to her, it’s just - I was just wondering.”

Croach frowns, confused, and his eyes flick down towards the table. He quirks an eyebrow, and looks back at Sparks with a smirk.

“I was aware of her relationship with Jimmy Lyons,” he says, “if that is what you are trying to ask me. Did she not tell you?”

“We haven’t talked much, I guess. Since when are you two talking again?”

“We have always talked,” Croach says, like he really believes that’s true. Okay, fine. It’s not like Sparks wanted to have the big emotional conversation where Croach finally falls apart and admits ending things with Red was the real mistake, that he’s miserable, makes Sparks sit there while Croach cries on his shoulder. Yeah, it’d make life easier, probably, if Croach’d just ‘fess up so they could all move past it, but Sparks isn’t much of a shoulder for crying on.

“Okay,” Sparks says, and grabs himself a beer. “Let’s look this stuff over, and then we can write some stuff? Or go find an open mic night somewhere, or something.”

“I would like that,” Croach says, and mostly looks like he means it. As long as they have that, as long as Sparks can keep him just okay enough, they’ll be fine until Red gets back, until they’re back on the road, back where this all actually works.

*

There’s a date marked off on the Vintage Birdhouses calendar in Sparks’ kitchen, but he’d remember it without the big red exclamation point. When it comes, he shuts off his cell phone, keeps his computer closed, unplugs the landline, and really throws himself into assembling the mess of furniture he keeps buying and never quite manages to put together. Bookshelves, finally, he can unpack the handful of boxes taunting him from the corner. An actual kitchen table, so he can stop pretending he likes sitting on the floor and eating off the coffee table. He builds, he unpacks, he does laundry, he deep cleans the fridge, and the oven, and the shower, and when he can’t think of anything else to do he starts making himself the finest beef stew this world has ever seen.

Croach just about knocks the door down while it’s simmering. Sparks thinks, pretty seriously, about not answering it, but he probably can’t avoid this forever.

“You are not answering your phone,” Croach says, when Sparks opens the door. “Red wanted me to make sure you are alive.”

“I am.”

“Obviously. Have you read it?”

“Nope, and if you plan on making me, you can’t come in.”

Croach rolls his eyes, and then gets distracted sniffing the air. “Can I have dinner if I come in?”

“Yeah,” Sparks says, and steps aside even though he knows, he’s absolutely certain, if Croach comes in they’ll talk about the article, and he’ll read the article, and he won’t reach his goal of a full twenty-four hours leaving that bubble unburst. 

They eat, and they talk about nothing; Croach texts Red so she knows Sparks is alive, and he laughs at Sparks but turns his phone off when Sparks asks. They eat, until they can’t, and they drink, because that’s what they do together now, and they noodle around with stupid lyrics and silly tunes, and it’s good, it’s a good evening, and then Sparks bursts the bubble.

“Is it bad?”

“Red is furious.”

“Yeah,” Sparks says, “I figured. Is it bad?”

“It is short,” Croach says, and if Sparks didn’t have a guitar in his hands he’d be strangling Croach right now. “But it is not bad.”

“I probably shouldn’t’ve slept with her,” Sparks says.

“Or you should have ended it when it was clear you did not share her feelings. But it is not bad, Sparks. Red is upset, but Red was always going to be upset. She makes you sound like your father.”

“That’s pretty bad.”

“Your father is one of my personal heroes.”

“Gross.”

“I am just saying,” Croach says, with a shrug, “there are worse things she could have said about you. I am a weirdo, and a little creepy; Red collects broken hearts like trophies. You are bad at emotions and good at music.”

“She called you creepy?”

“It was implied. I do not mind, although I thought she liked me.”

“Yeah,” Sparks says, instead of what he wants to, that Rebecca never really liked him, that it always bothered Sparks a little bit, the faces she made when he turned around, the way she made fun of his weird no-contractions thing, that she was kind of terrible and it never quite bothered him enough not to laugh at it, not to keep sleeping with her. “Sorry.”

“It is good press, Sparks, you were right. She writes well, and I know you do not want to look like you are chasing your father’s legacy, but she did a nice job creating a link between the two of you. You like a good story, and she has given us one.”

“We had one,” Sparks says, “but okay.”

Croach frowns at him, one of those looks like he’s trying to see right through Sparks, or like he already has, those big dark eyes narrowed just a little, completely unreadable. He looks, and he smiles, and he leans back on the couch and drops his notebook.

“You should get out of the house,” he says. “Karaoke?”

There was a plan, a plan to build a nice cozy bubble, get a good night’s sleep, deal with all this - read the article, talk to his parents, talk to Red, whatever else he needs to do - tomorrow, well-rested and in as good a mood as possible. But he’s feeling a little itchy, too big for his skin, and there are few things in life better than watching Croach get drunk and let his inner Dolly Parton out.

“Yeah, okay.”

Being out of the house, out among people, is okay, and then he has a few drinks and it’s nice, and Croach starts singing and it’s good, and he borrows Croach’s phone and texts Red _sorry. this is sparks btw. sorry._ and she texts back _fuck you_ but without any exclamation points so it’s probably okay, and it’s fun, it’s a fun night.

“Sparks Nevada,” says a sweet, throaty voice behind him, while Croach is up at the bar signing himself up for ever more ill-advised songs. “I thought that was you.”

Mercy Laredo, of all the goddamn people, drops into Croach’s vacant seat with a smirk and a raised eyebrow. Yeah, okay, leaving his apartment was the right choice.

“You look good,” he says, the least bad of the toothless small-talky things people say when they run into each other after a decade or so.

“I know. You look tired.”

“Just drunk. I’d love to catch up, but we need to wait about five minutes, because Croach is about to do ‘Coat of Many Colors’ and blow your mind.”

Mercy narrows her eyes. “You’ve gotten weirder.”

“Probably,” Sparks says, and laughs. “You always liked when I was weird.”

“I liked you enough to put up with how weird you were, that’s not the same thing.”

“Close enough,” Sparks says, and Mercy laughs loud enough to almost completely drown out Croach’s surprisingly heartfelt singing. They should do this on tour, maybe, just to see how people react. 

“A little bird told me you’re performing again.”

“I didn’t really ever stop,” Sparks says, but he knows what she means. Mercy’s the only person on the planet he’s not related to who knows the fit he threw, once upon a time, how emphatically he walked away, how final his idiot teenage self thought he was being. “But yeah.”

“I didn’t think you had it in you to stay away as long as you did,” she says. “I’m glad you’re back, though. Is your dad - “

“Caiaphas is maintaining a respectful distance, and I’m returning the favor.”

Mercy rolls her eyes, because of course she does. Caiaphas was never anything but good to her, was always just a legend who held out his hand and pulled her out of a trailer park so he could build a label on her back when his name and his son weren’t enough. 

“You’ve got such a chip on your shoulder,” she says, and then, thank God, changes the subject. “Your friend’s got a pretty voice.”

“You should come hear us play sometime.”

“I could do that, yeah,” Mercy says, and drains her drink with a glint in her eye Sparks hasn’t seen in years but still definitely recognizes. “Or I could come back to your place, we could jam a little.”

Sparks has a lot of fond memories of jamming with Mercy, the kind of fond that makes his mouth go a little dry. “Yeah,” he says, tries not to sound too eager, not to sound like he’s seventeen again and Mercy’s the coolest person he’s ever met in his life. He fails, he thinks, based on the way Mercy laughs at him, but she winks so he’s pretty sure it doesn’t matter. 

The three of them crowd into a cab, Sparks in the middle, Croach humming and tapping out a rhythm on Sparks’ knee, Sparks too distracted by Mercy’s hand on his thigh to bother stopping him. He’s the good kind of drunk, warm and fuzzy at the edges, just floaty enough not to worry about being quiet when Croach falls asleep on the couch and Mercy drags him to bed.

*

“I’m fine, Nevada,” Red says, exhaustion cracking the words. She doesn’t sound fine, and she doesn’t really look fine, in the press she’s still getting or in the pictures she sends every now and then. “I’m tired, this whole thing is kind of a lot, but I’m fine. Is that - are you listenin’ to your dad’s music?”

“Not by choice,” Sparks says. “It’s Croach and Mercy”

“You ain’t thinkin’ of replacin’ me.” It should be a threat, coming from Red, she should be hissing fire at him, and he should hand the phone to Croach so she can hiss fire at him for forgetting not to sing old Caiaphas and Stacy numbers in front of Sparks. She just sounds tired, though, and a little afraid.

“Of course not,” Sparks says, and does her the courtesy of not reacting to her quiet sigh of relief. “Oh, I sent you a press schedule, can you figure out what you can call in for and what we should do without you?”

“I don’t trust you to do any of it without me.”

“Okay.”

She sighs again. “I’ll let you know. I’m not that busy, when we’re not travelin’ or soundcheckin’, so we’ll see, I guess. I should - I should be there, for this.”

“Yeah. But it’s fine. You’ll be home soon.”

In the other room, Croach and Mercy are singing “Town on Fire”, because it’s a good song or because Mercy knows he hates it Sparks isn’t sure. Somewhere at the other end of the line, he can hear Jimmy Lyons’ cheerful drawl, and Red’s voice answering him, a little brighter than it just was. So that must be going okay, then, so Red must not be as unhappy as she sounds. 

“I’ve gotta go, Sparks, I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Yeah,” Sparks says, “goodnight.”

With nothing to distract him, Sparks drifts back into the living room, tries to keep his face impassive while his girlfriend and his bandmate sing a song about the night he was conceived. The bottle of whiskey on the piano is half-empty; Sparks is pretty sure it was full an hour ago. Mercy smiles at him, singing about a broken-down bus and passion so hot it set the town on fire, and Sparks tries his best to smile back.

Croach catches his eye, that odd sort of I’ve-figured-something-out look on his face again, even through the droop of drunkenness, and when the song ends he shifts into “Jolene” instead of another Caiaphas and Stacy classic. Mercy laughs, and swigs from the bottle, and Sparks laughs, and Croach doesn’t laugh but he smiles around the words, still watching Sparks. 

Something’s off, but Sparks can’t put his finger on it, and when Croach stumbles off to bed Mercy smirks at him, and climbs in his lap, and he fucks her on Croach’s couch and forgets to worry.

*

It’s a good thing Sparks can’t sleep, because whoever’s knocking on the door isn’t going away, and Mercy’s a holy terror if she doesn’t get enough sleep. Croach is slumped against the doorframe, stinking drunk, eyes bloodshot and mouth curved in a loose, sloppy smile.

“Croach, you have any idea what time it is?”

“Sometime after last call,” he says, frowning at his wrist where he’s not wearing a watch. Sparks sighs.

“Come on,” he says, offers his hand so Croach can stumble in and Sparks can close the door behind him. Croach’s hand is warm, his grip tight, and even when he’s taken the few steps past the threshold he doesn’t let go. He doesn’t let go, and he’s smiling so soft and sweet, and he’s got that look in his eyes again, looking right through Sparks.

“I did not want to go home,” Croach says. “I wanted - I did not want to be alone.”

“Okay,” Sparks says, and he doesn’t get to say anything else because Croach surges up to kiss him.

Sparks kisses him back. Not because - because that’s what you do, when someone kisses you, when someone’s lips are soft and they’re straining up on their toes to reach you because they want it so much and their stubble’s rough against your skin. Of course Sparks kisses back, of course his tongue slips against Croach’s, of course he pushes him back against the wall to keep him in place. That’s...that’s what you do. When someone knocks on your door at two in the morning, and stammers out an excuse, and they’re drunk, and they kiss you, you just kiss back.

“Sparks?” Mercy calls from the bedroom; Sparks jumps away from Croach like he’s been burned, so fast he almost trips over his own feet.

“Uh,” Sparks says, and then he doesn’t have to worry about talking, ‘cause Croach shoves past him to run into the kitchen and heave his guts into the sink. Okay. Great. He’ll - he’ll do what he needs, and he’ll crash on the couch, and they can forget about this in the morning. Sparks walks on oddly shaky legs back to the bedroom, slips back into bed next to Mercy.

“Was someone at the door?”

“Just Croach,” Sparks says. “He’s drunk.”

“Is he throwing up? You don’t wanna hold his hair, or whatever?”

“His hair’s too short to hold.” Croach tasted like scotch. That’s a thing Sparks knows now, what the inside of Croach’s mouth tastes like, that he uses his teeth a little too much when he kisses. 

“You know what I mean,” Mercy says, and sighs when Sparks doesn’t say anything. “You’re such an ass sometimes.”

Mercy rolls out of bed, and Sparks focuses on the sound of her opening and closing the hall closet for blankets, pillows, maybe a washcloth, of her soft footsteps down the hall, of her groaning and asking, “Jesus, Croach, what did you _drink_?”

Sparks pushed Croach against the wall, Sparks groaned against his lips and slid his tongue against Croach’s and Sparks kissed him, and Croach is drunk but Sparks is stone-cold sober, and if he doesn’t keep focusing on something else he’ll drown.

He falls asleep, finally; when he wakes up, Mercy’s gone and Croach is groaning on the couch.

“You awake?”

“Maybe? Sort of,” Croach says, voice scraping rougher than usual in his throat. 

“You want food?”

“No. Well, maybe. Or not.”

“Coffee?”

“ _Yes_. Yes, please.”

While Sparks busies himself with coffee and eggs and toast, Croach manages to pull himself off the couch, stumble into the kitchen, and sit mostly upright at the table. He looks like shit; if Red coming back doesn’t fix this, Sparks doesn’t know what’ll happen but he knows it won’t be good.

Sparks eats his breakfast in silence, doesn’t look at Croach, doesn’t start any conversations, just eats his toast and drinks his coffee and does the dishes and lets himself pretend there’s nothing to talk about. Croach lets him, for a while. For a little while.

“So, I should - last night, I was - I did not intend - “

“We don’t need to talk about it,” Sparks says, too fast, too emphatic. They do, maybe, at least about Croach’s drunken late-night wandering if nothing else, but...not-talking seems like a better option.

Croach seems to think so, too; he lets his breath out in a relieved whoosh. “Good. I - good. We will not talk about it.”

“Ever.”

“Right,” Croach says, weak smile and distant look in his eyes. “Ever.” 

*

Mercy Laredo is big and bright and has a habit of blinding everyone who gets too close. She blazed across the country as a seventeen-year-old pop-country sensation, burned out dark and small when she ran out of fuel, and now she’s content with smaller orbits, with dive bars and out-of-the-way venues in towns no one’s heard of, and she burns hotter than ever.

Two years ago, Croach was a lightweight, giggly and loose-limbed after a good strong drink or a couple beers. It’s not Mercy’s fault that’s not true anymore - Sparks and Red did that to him, tour did that to him, he did that to himself - but she thinks he’s funny when he’s drunk, thinks he’s so cute stumbling around and smiling that weird lopsided smile that only comes out when he’s staggering, and she’s not helping. 

“What if you stayed in tonight?” Sparks asks, watching Mercy get dressed instead of paying attention to the tour schedule he’s supposed to be giving a last-minute once-over. “Croach could come over. Watch a movie, write some songs, something like that?”

“You have the soul of a very boring fifty-year-old,” Mercy says, and leans in to kiss his forehead. “We’re young and hot and not boring at all, so no.”

“Croach is the most boring person I know.”

“Not when he loosens up a little. You sure you don’t want to come?”

“I’ve got a lot to do,” Sparks says. “And don’t let him forget we have a radio thing in the morning.”

Mercy rolls her eyes, but she kisses him again before she leaves, so probably he doesn’t need to worry. Probably. Sparks spends another ten minutes working on the chart of gas prices, times they can drive through the night, times they’ll need to stay in a motel, how much they can spend on rooms, but the numbers keep swimming in front of his eyes. This is usually fun, but he can’t focus, and he gives up.

There’s other stuff on his to-do list, easier stuff; he sends a copy of the album to his mother with a short email that leaves out most of the details of his life right now, he makes sure his guitar case is packed up so he won’t have to worry about it at ass o’clock in the morning when they leave for the interview, he texts Mercy to remind her to remind Croach about the early commitment, and then he settles down in bed and reads. 

Sort of reads. Holds a book, anyway, and every now and then turns a page, realizes he didn’t actually retain anything he read on the page before, turns back, and starts the cycle over again. His eyes close, and when he opens them again it’s to Mercy’s key in the door, to her wild giggle and Croach drunkenly singing “Indomitable”. It’s four in the morning; Sparks’ alarm is set for five.

“Shhh,” Mercy hisses, “Croach, Croach, shhh, you’ll wake Old Man Nevada.”

“You are going to wake him anyway,” Croach grumbles, “so you can have loud sex.”

Mercy laughs, a shrieking, cackling sort of laugh, and even if Sparks had wanted to pretend to be asleep he can’t imagine she’d believe it after that. He tosses his book aside, takes a few deep breaths, and tries to keep a calm, reasonable face on as he heads down the hall.

“Oh, thank God, you’re up,” Mercy says; Croach is leaning heavy on her, like his legs don’t work, and she shoves him at Sparks before she takes off down the hall. “He’s heavy, and I’ve had to pee for like half an hour.”

Croach _is_ heavy, slumped against Sparks, barely holding any of his own weight. He smells like scotch, and sweat, like he did when he kissed Sparks, like he does a lot lately. Sparks sighs, and wraps his arm around Croach’s waist to make it a little easier to get him to the couch.

“Let’s get you to sleep,” he says, and Croach tries to help, but his legs are wobbly and Sparks drags him to the couch more than anything. Sparks tries to ease him down, but he just kind of goes limp and falls onto the cushions with a loud _oof_. “What’re the odds of you being sober enough for an interview in two hours?”

“I love you,” Croach says, which is as much an answer as anything else.

“Yeah,” Sparks says, “okay,” and covers him with the blanket they’ve just started keeping on the back of the couch for nights like these. Croach is snoring by the time Sparks empties out the trash can to keep near his head, just in case.

“He’s so _cute_ when he’s drunk, God,” Mercy says, throwing her clothes all over Sparks’ room. “He told me he loved me like twenty times, I love it. I know you love his Dolly, but have you heard his Reba? He’s such - “

“He’s not a toy.”

“No shit,” Mercy says, throws herself onto the bed and sprawls out. “He’s also not a child.”

“I told you he couldn’t stay out late, I told you - “

“And I told him, and he got drunk anyway. I’m not his keeper.”

“You’re his friend. He can’t stand up, Mercy, why is that _fun_ for you?”

“I assumed you’d grow out of this whole oversensitive thing you used to do,” she says, sitting up, “but I guess not.”

Sparks is supposed to be awake in an hour, walking out the door in an hour and a half. Red’ll be at the radio station, and he can’t bring Croach, and he’ll have to tell her why, and she’ll blame him and none of this is his fault. 

“I’m not doing this with you right now,” Sparks says, and Mercy laughs, the way she used to laugh when they were seventeen, and his album was failing, and he was opening for her, and all he wanted to do was to go home, to give up instead of keep failing. 

“You gonna run away again?” she asks, and it’d be so easy to let her draw him back in, to really do this, to fight it out good and loud, to scream at her and let her scream back, have a good angry fuck against the wall and face Red with scratches on his arms, on his back, furious and ashamed and so, so tired.

“Yeah,” he says, instead, and shuts the bedroom door behind him when he goes back down the hall to make coffee, to sit on the floor in front of the couch and listen to Croach breathe until it’s time to go.

*

Red pokes at her scrambled eggs with her fork and sighs. “One of you could’ve told me how bad it was.”

“I didn’t want you to worry,” Sparks says. “And I’m not sure I realized how bad it was. I’ve been kind of...I don’t know. Distracted.”

Sparks gives up pretending to eat his pancakes and goes back to his too-sweet coffee. He had a cup at home, one before the interview, and now this, all on an empty stomach, but he doesn’t quite have an appetite. Red looks like she needs to sleep for a year, and he just dumped all this in her lap, and this whole thing is falling apart and he’s only just now realizing how much he needs it not to.

“What happened to him, though? He didn’t just start out of the blue.”

“He kind of did?” Sparks shrugs. “I figured he was missing you, honestly, it was about the same time you started showing up on magazine covers kissing your tour buddy. But he kind of - I don’t think that’s it. I don’t think it’s you.”

“Okay.”

“He doesn’t talk to me, Red. I really don’t know.”

“Okay,” she says, again. “I’ll see what I can do. And about - Jim and I aren’t - that’s not a thing, anymore.”

No wonder she looks so tired, shit. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” she says, aims a weak smile at him. “Tour fling.”

“Right. Okay. Why don’t - Croach isn’t going to be in any condition to talk, for a while, and I didn’t really sleep, and you look like you haven’t slept, either, so why don’t you go home? Get some rest, we can deal with this tonight. Or tomorrow, I guess, before the release party.”

“Nevada, if you tell me I look tired one more time, I will _end_ you,” Red says, all her usual fire and fury toned down, but still there. It makes him feel so, so much better, God. “But okay, yeah.”

Croach is right where Sparks left him, propped up on his side, snoring loud enough to deafen a man. Mercy’s key is on the table, and the drawer he’d cleared out for her not too long ago is empty again. So that’s that. And that’s okay, he’s okay.

It shouldn’t be possible, the amount of coffee he’s had, the way his bones are vibrating, but exhaustion hits Sparks like a truck when he sees his bed, and he’s asleep before he fully collapses onto it.

*

“I ain’t in charge of your emotional well-bein’, Croach, and if you tell me you’re okay, I’ll believe you. I’ll bury you so deep no one will ever find your sad, desiccated little corpse if it turns out you lied to me, but I’ll believe you.”

“I am not not okay,” Croach says, and Red sighs. “I am not being difficult on purpose, I am just - I have a headache.”

“Well, yeah.”

“You are asking me to be thoughtful, and thinking hurts. But I am being honest, Red, I do not think I am okay but I am not sure I am not okay. That is the best I can tell you.”

There’s silence, then, long silence, long enough Sparks starts to fidget. He should go out there, make sure everything’s okay, make sure they’re okay, get involved in the conversation so they can all be on the same page, but Red seems to be doing fine, and if Sparks is honest with himself - which he tries to be, he really does - he’s afraid of what Croach might have to say to him.

“You and Sparks have done this before,” Croach says. “I think you forget I have only ever been a writer and a studio musician. I do not dislike performing, but I do not love it the way you two do. I have been trying to get used to it, to get better at it.”

“I don’t think you need to get better,” Red says, “but I get it.”

They go silent again. It’s dark outside Sparks’ bedroom window, late, and he’s going to hate himself tomorrow for messing up his sleep quite this badly. There’s makeup smeared on a pillowcase, Mercy didn’t bother to take it off before she fell asleep last night, and it’s been long enough since Sparks has eaten that the smell of pizza coming from the living room makes him feel weak and shaky.

Red has her feet up on the coffee table and Croach is curled up with his head in her lap when Sparks gives up waiting for whatever he was waiting for and comes out. 

“Good,” Red says, “you ain’t dead.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Sparks says, and she laughs, a good, solid laugh. She’s okay, then. Croach is watching him, just watching as he gets himself a plate and a few slices, and Sparks should say something, Sparks should ask _why did you kiss me_ , _what did it mean_ , but they’re not going to talk about it, that was the deal. “Everything good?” he asks, instead.

“I think so,” Croach says, and because he’s Croach, because he knows Sparks so well, because he never fails to give Sparks an easy out that Sparks never fails to take, he asks about the annotated tour schedule, and they spend the rest of the night eating, and talking logistics, and laughing.

*

“Sparks Nevada! It’s an honor to meet you, a real treat.” Jimmy Lyons parts the crowd between them like Moses parting the sea, wraps Sparks’ hand up in a handshake so tight it hurts and pumps his arm until it feels like it might fall off. “I grew up on your daddy’s music, what a guy, a real American treasure.”

“Uh, thanks,” Sparks says, trying to be subtle about scanning the room for an out. Normally he’d throw Red at one of these types, she hates being a human shield but loves the excuse to be rude, but he’s not going to do that to her tonight. Croach, where’s Croach, he’ll do.

“But of course, you know that. Let me buy you a drink.”

“It’s an open bar,” Sparks says, but that doesn’t seem to deter him. Encourages him, if anything, he laughs a huge, booming laugh that makes half the room look their way, claps Sparks on the back so hard it takes his breath away for a second, and leads him towards the bar.

Sparks is good at this sort of thing, as much as he hates it, as much as he’d prefer to be so embarrassingly bad at it people go out of their way to keep him quiet in a corner, but he’s so good at it. You grow up the sort of semi-famous he did, you tour the country and play stadiums, you make your home in the country music capitol of the world, you learn how to deal with press, and label heads, and annoying fellow musicians who can help your career. 

So Sparks grumbles, but he laughs, and he flatters, and he keeps his eyes scanning the room for an excuse to pull away but he smiles, and agrees it’d be a real waste of Red and Croach’s voices not to do a couple Caiaphas and Stacy covers on tour, and he smiles for cameras, and he trades tour stories, and he absolutely doesn’t cheer out loud when he gets dragged away to do a little press with his actual band, with the only people in the room he actually likes.

Red grabs his arm when they’re done with the photos and the questions, tugs him off to a quieter corner of the room.

“He’s very charming,” Sparks says, and Red rolls her eyes.

“You say that like it’s terrible,” she says. “He is, and it’s nice. Someone wanting to charm you and have a conversation isn’t a bad thing, Nevada.”

“It’s the _worst_ thing.”

Red rolls her eyes again; someday Sparks is going to make her roll them right out of her head. He’s sort of looking forward to it.

The party swirls on around them, important people talking about whatever while Marshal’s Station’s debut album plays on a loop. It’s good, it’s a good party, it’s a good album, they made it here and they’ll make it wherever they go next. He should be circling the room, shaking hands, accepting compliments, checking in, but he’s in no hurry to leave this corner, and Red’s in no hurry to make him. Besides, Croach is doing plenty of - shit.

“I think Croach might need a rescue,” Sparks says, points to the bar, points to Croach leaned up against the bar with Jimmy Lyons between him and the rest of the room.

Red frowns. “Why?”

“We were just talking about why.”

“Croach ain’t you, Nevada, he’s fine.”

He doesn’t look fine, he looks trapped; Jimmy’s pushed into his personal space, backed him up against the bar, and Croach is laughing but just looking at him makes Sparks feel itchy, claustrophobic, hemmed-in. But Croach is laughing, and if he wants to move away he’s doing a bad job showing it, and it’s not like he’s flinching when Jim leans over him to put his glass down or pick it back up. Still.

Red sighs, the way she does when she’s about to piss Sparks off by being right about something. Great. “Nevada, did something happen?”

Uh. “Could you be more specific?”

“Something that would explain why it bothers you to see Croach flirtin’ with Jim?”

“They’re not - is that flirting?”

“Oh Lord,” Red says, and Sparks is really not a fan of her tone of voice right now. “Okay. He doesn’t need rescuing, and if he does, he’ll let us know.”

“He’s not you, either, Red.”

“I know that,” Red snaps; her face doesn’t match the sharp edge of her voice, eyes soft as she watches Croach tip his head back and laugh, watches Jimmy watch him. “He’ll still be fine. How long before we won’t look bad if we leave?”

Sparks should push, maybe, he still doesn’t really know what’s going on with Red, what happened on the road, but not here, and not now, not when they’re all so nicely balanced on the tightrope, not when they’ll all be fine as long as no one makes any sudden moves. He slips his arm through hers, and smiles.

“Let’s do a round, make sure all the right people see we’re still here, and then we can probably sneak out okay.”

*

Red has a way of kissing so sweetly everything else falls away; when Sparks can’t handle the weight of taking responsibility for his own mistakes, that’s what he thinks about, the way she presses her lips to his and just goes soft, and sweet, washes away any objections he might have with the force it takes her to go gentle like this.

They’re getting an early start in the morning, and Red’s staying at his place so Croach doesn’t have to make two stops with the van full of gear, and maybe she knew this was going to happen, maybe she planned it, and maybe she didn’t. Sparks doesn’t care, even if he should. It doesn’t matter, even if it matters.

Sparks tangles his hands up in her hair, and she grips his shoulders tight, short nails digging into his skin, and she doesn’t stop kissing him until she has to, until neither one of them can breathe.

“This is a terrible idea,” she says, sprawled out on his bed, staring at the ceiling, catching her breath. And yeah, it is, obviously, but she’s not supposed to say that.

“Do you want,” Sparks starts, but trails off, doesn’t know how to finish the sentence. To do it again, to pretend it never happened, to talk about it, to never talk about it, to get some sleep, to make Sparks sleep on the couch. 

“Let’s just - let’s see what happens,” Red says. “Let’s see where this goes.”

That’s a terrible idea. It’s what they always do, what Red always does, what Sparks always does even when they’re not doing it together, and it never goes anywhere good, it never ends well.

“Yeah,” Sparks says. “Okay.”

*

It started as a safety rule - you don’t get to ride shotgun if you might fall asleep, because shotgun’s job is to keep the driver awake. It’s turned into just the way of things, that the driver drives alone and the other two sit in the back, sleeping or bothering each other or making plans or whatever. Right now Red and Croach are just reading in silence, Red with her feet up on the seat, leaning against Croach’s shoulder. 

Everything’s terrible, if Sparks looks at it logically. Sleeping with Red is a disaster waiting to happen, he and Croach still aren’t talking about what they probably need to, Croach is pretending he’s okay with Sparks and Red, and they’re all avoiding all this stuff in a situation where they’re in all the same small places every day, all the time, for the next year or so of their lives. 

But Red’s leaning on Croach, and every now and then he laughs, and tilts his book to show Red something, and she laughs, and when she catches Sparks watching her in the rearview mirror she winks, and Sparks is spending his days in a van with people he loves, so much, and his nights on a stage with those people doing something he loves, and he’s falling asleep and waking up next to one of those people, and it’s all going to fall apart, and the longer it goes without falling apart the worse it’s going to be when it happens, but Sparks is so happy right now, and maybe it’s okay to just be happy, to just enjoy it while he can.

“Coming up next, we have the new single from Jimmy Lyons’ third - “

“You want me to turn it off?”

“No,” Croach says, and Red laughs.

“I wasn’t asking you.”

“It’s fine,” Red says, “I like this one.”

It’s a good song, really, even when Sparks is feeling uncharitable he can admit Red brings enough to the table it doesn’t matter that he finds Jimmy Lyons hacky and cheap. It’s better when Croach starts singing along, and Red joins in, and Sparks can turn the radio down a little and pretend this is how it always goes. 

“We should start performing this,” he says, “if that wouldn’t be, like, a thing.”

“It would not be ‘a thing’, if ‘a thing’ means a problem,” Croach says, so certain. “Jim suggested it, actually.”

Sparks doesn’t catch his eyes in the mirror, because if he does he’s going to ask the question he doesn’t want to ask, about what Croach did after he and Red left the release party, about where he went and who with. Croach wouldn’t mind, Croach would just shrug, and tell him, but Sparks doesn’t think he can ask that question without asking a different question, about Croach’s lips and Croach’s stubble and the way Croach’s teeth caught his lower lip.

Sparks just nods, just focuses on the road, just listens to the two of them sing about drifting together, and being in love, and _knowing_ , and lets the sweet sad way their voices slip around each other push everything else out of his brain.

*

“I don’t know if y’all know this,” Red says, wild-eyed and glowing, “but this is probably the last Marshal’s Station show ever.”

Sparks frowns at her, but she’s grinning that just-you-wait grin of hers, and Croach is making just about the same face, so she must be going somewhere with this. He quirks an eyebrow, and she just laughs.

“We’re about to embarrass Sparks, here, so bad he might never speak to us again, so y’all can go home and tell your friends you were there the night we broke up. Y’see, it’s Sparks’ birthday tomorrow.”

This can’t possibly be good. 

“Kind of a weird name, right? ‘Sparks’? Sparks Nevada, it ain’t just this tall drink of ginger ale, it’s an actual place. And that ain’t a coincidence. Y’all know that old song ‘Town on Fire’? I lost my virginity to that song, did you know that, Sparks?”

“I did not.”

“It’s very important to me. And pretty important to you, too, I reckon.”

Sparks’ mouth is dry. He’s going to strangle her with his bare hands, and he’s going to love it, and then he’s going to break Croach’s fingers, one by one, as punishment for sitting at his piano and _laughing_ at his pain. Sparks has never hated anyone the way he hates these two people at this moment in time.

“An important song,” Red says, grinning so wide it looks like the top half of her head might fall off, “about the very important little town of Sparks, Nevada.”

The crowd cheers, and Red laughs, and Croach’s fingers trip over his keyboard, and he quirks an eyebrow at Sparks, and Red flips her hair and she’s just watching him, watching the way he reacts when the woman he’s sleeping with starts purring lyrics his mother wrote at him. She is delighted, and she is radiant, and Sparks is going to drown under the weight of being in love with her all over again.

Sparks catches his breath, and adjusts his guitar, and starts playing along, because he can’t think of any other way to get through this.

*

“You do not need to be so careful with me,” Croach says. “I am not as fragile as you seem to think.”

Sparks thinks about Croach just about crying into his whiskey over the idea of hurting Red, about Croach’s legs buckling under him ‘cause he’s too drunk to stand, about the terrified determination in Croach’s eyes before he tugged Sparks into that kiss. 

“I don’t think you’re fragile,” Sparks says, instead of the truth. Croach knows he’s lying, but he does him the courtesy of just quirking an eyebrow and sighing instead of saying so.

“I think I knew this would happen,” he says, “you and Red. I have been expecting it.”

“And it doesn’t bother you?”

“I did not say that. But it does not bother me much. It is a good thing, I think, and it was always going to happen.”

There’s a way Red looks at Sparks, like she knows all his secrets, like she knows he’s fallen in love with her, like there’s only so long he can pretend not saying it will make it not true. He’s in love with her, and she’s just looking for some company at night, and soon his company will come with too many strings and she’ll run off again. It’s always going to happen, maybe, Croach might be right, but it’ll also always end the same way.

“You are good together,” Croach says, snaps Sparks out of it. “Better than she and I. Better than - you are good together.”

“Better than who?”

“Nothing. No one. I was just - no one.”

Croach won’t look at him, which is even worse than when Croach won’t stop looking at him. Sparks sighs, clenches his fist, grits his teeth, and stops pretending there’s nothing to say.

“If you’ve got something to say to me, Croach, I wish you’d just say it.”

It comes out angrier than Sparks intended, probably ‘cause he’s all clenched up, bracing himself for whatever comes next, and Croach looks a little bit hurt, a lot startled. Something flickers, for a second, in his dark eyes, in the set of his lips, but it passes, and Sparks has never been able to read Croach as well as Croach can read him.

“I do not know what you mean,” he says, and frowns. “Unless - you have been avoiding me, because I interfered with your relationship with Mercy, right? I am sorry for that.”

“That’s not what I meant.” 

“Okay,” Croach says. “If you have something to say to me, I wish you would just say it.”

Sparks meets Croach’s eyes, and holds his gaze. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Croach smiles, with his mouth and not his eyes, and hops off the stage. “Okay,” he says, and walks away, leaving Sparks knowing he did that wrong, but not quite how, or why, or what he should do to fix it. 

There’s something about the tone of Croach’s voice, even on the best days, that sort of makes Sparks feel like crawling into bed and sobbing every last tear out of his body, not that he’d ever tell Croach that. Tonight, though, tonight something about the way his voice rasps, the way it breaks just a little in the middle of “Poor Me”, brings a lump to Sparks’ throat and water to his eyes.

He knew this was going to fall apart, he’s known that for a while. It shouldn’t really surprise him to see the cracks forming.

Red keeps looking back and forth between them on the ride back to the motel, eyebrows drawn, mouth set in a tight line. She kisses Sparks soft and sweet outside their room, and pulls away with a sad smile.

“I’m stayin’ with Croach tonight,” she says. “I think he needs to not be alone.”

Sparks thinks that’s what he needs, too, but he just nods, and smiles at her, and falls asleep straining to hear their voices through the thin motel walls.

*

Red and Croach come stumbling out of their room in the morning looking half-dead and all the way exhausted. That can’t be good, but Red smiles at him, cups his cheek with her hand and kisses him hello, so it’s probably not all bad.

“You didn’t sleep?” he asks, while Croach loads up the van.

“We sort of lost track of time. First stop, enough coffee to stop a man’s heart.”

Red climbs in the front for a change, lets Croach stretch out on the backseat. He’s asleep before they’re out of the parking lot, one of Sparks’ sweatshirts bunched up under his head, Red’s jacket over his shoulders. Something twists in Sparks’ gut when he looks at Croach, sometimes, something hot and sharp and not quite - not quite as bad as that sounds.

“You should’ve told me he kissed you,” Red says, an hour and two large coffees into the drive. Sparks sighs and turns the radio off.

“Probably,” he says. “It was - I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it.”

“Please. You didn’t want to have to think about it.”

“Okay,” Sparks says, laughs a little. “Yeah, of course I didn’t. It’s Croach, and it’s me. Is he - is it a big deal?”

“You used to complain about how much I use my teeth when I kiss you.”

“I got used to it.”

“Maybe.” Red wiggles her feet out of her shoes so she can rest them on the dashboard. Her socks don’t match. “I’m lucky to have you, Nevada.”

“What?”

Red laughs. “I am. And you’re lucky to have me. For whatever reason, God help me, you understand me, and I understand you.”

“I don’t understand you right now,” he says, and she laughs again. Sparks’ shoulders are tight, his jaw is tight, his stomach’s all twisted up, anxious about where this is going, what’s happening right now, and Red’s so calm, and so sure of herself. “I love you,” he says. 

“You don’t like to want things,” Red says; it’s not the answer he expected, it’s not an answer at all. She looks at him, little smile curling up her lips, soft sympathy in her eyes. “It’s worked out okay for you, because you surround yourself with people who tend to just fall in your lap when you need them, and when you hit the point you need to start making an effort, you don’t, and they leave, and they give you all sorts of excuses.”

“That’s not - “ Sparks starts, and frowns. They’ll come up on traffic soon enough, it’s getting to be that time of day, but the road’s clear now. It’s a nice day for a drive.

“I’m not accusin’ you of anything,” she says, rests her hand on his thigh and squeezes just a little, warm and reassuring. “I’m tellin’ you it’s okay. It’s okay for you to want things, and it’s okay if you don’t know how to let yourself. Just, sometimes you put so much energy into not wantin’, you don’t notice when someone’s doin’ it for you.”

“Croach.”

“Right now, yeah,” Red says. “Me, once. Even Rebecca, probably, at least a little.”

“You think I want Croach so bad it made him want me.”

Red laughs, again, squeezes his leg again. 

“I think there’s somethin’ about you that draws Croach in, and I think it’s strong enough, and he knows you well enough, he don’t care that you’ll spook the minute he needs you to make an effort.”

“I don’t think I like this person you’re describing,” Sparks says. It scrapes rough in his throat, sits in his stomach like lead, how right she is, how well she knows him.

“I know,” Red says, “but it’s okay, ‘cause I’m in love with him.”

*

Whatever Croach is playing, it’s sweet and mournful and makes Sparks want to cry, a little bit. Sparks doesn’t like to interrupt him when he’s writing, but his head’s swimming and his stomach hurts and Red keeps looking at him, and Sparks needs to do this now or crack under the strain.

“That new?”

“It has been in my head for a little while,” Croach says.

“Got lyrics in mind?”

“Maybe.” Croach stops playing long enough to move his notebook off the bench so Sparks can sit next to him. It’s tight, sides all pressed together, Croach warm and solid against him. Sparks doesn’t like to want things.

“I feel like I should apologize,” he says, while Croach starts that heartbreaking melody over again.

“For what?”

Sparks laughs a little. “I’m not sure. I just - I’m sorry.”

“Okay,” Croach says, with a little smile. “Apology accepted.”

Sparks takes a deep breath, lets it out slowly, does it again. Croach reaches for the low notes like Sparks isn’t even there, like he knows Sparks will just lean out of the way for him. 

“I’d like to kiss you,” Sparks says, in a rush. “Can I kiss you?”

Croach stops playing, not with the discordant bang of being startled into hitting too many keys, just lets his hands go still and the last few notes fade away.

“Why?”

“Red thinks I want to,” Sparks says, cringes as soon as it’s out of his mouth. Croach shifts away, and Sparks reaches out to take his arm. “That’s not - she’s usually right, about these things.”

“That is not a reason.”

“I like the way you kiss.”

“I do not understand you, Sparks Nevada,” Croach says, and that’s not an answer but the way he leans back in, the way he tilts his head, that probably is.

“I think you do,” Sparks says, and kisses him. His lips are soft, and dry, and he doesn’t taste like scotch anymore but his stubble scrapes against Sparks’ face the same, he catches Sparks’ bottom lip with his teeth the same. He sighs and slips his hand around the back of Sparks’ neck, holds him in place, and they have to do soundcheck, they have to - they have to just do this, and nothing else, forever.

Croach pulls away, eventually, not far, just breaks their lips apart and tilts his forehead against Sparks’.

“I am not sure what this means,” he says, just a hoarse whisper. 

“Let’s just see what happens,” Sparks says. “Let’s see where this goes.

“That is a terrible idea,” Croach says, but he tugs Sparks back in and kisses him again anyway.


End file.
